#EndBadGovernance Protest: Youth Group Threatens to Frustrate Minister’s Town Hall Meeting

A Youth group under the auspices of the Concerned Youth Alliance for Tinubu, COYAT, has warned the minister of Youth Development, Dr. Jamila Bio-Ibrahim, against holding her planned Town Hall Meeting following the ongoing #EndBadGovernance protests nationwide.

The group threatened to resist the minister if she went ahead with what they described as an ‘arranged gathering’ tagged as the town hall.

The spokesman of COYAT, Comrade Jameel Mohammed Mashi, said the group, which is passionate about sustaining President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s legacies, discovered that the ongoing protest across the nation, has woken some Ministers, including Dr Bio-Ibrahim, from their slumber.

However, Mashi, the youth group, does not believe the town hall meeting being planned by the Minister shows in any way that she understands the demography over which she was appointed a Minister.

His words, “Perhaps town hall as a medium of youth engagement could have worked three or four months ago when there was no restiveness of any kind. Even though it would also have achieved the objective of packing agreeable people in a hall and speaking to the converted, it would have at least suggested that the Youth Minister, notorious for her poor human relations, is at least ready to engage with the youth at last.

“However, this approach of convening a town hall meeting at this time when protests are springing up across the country reveals that Dr. Jamila is still fixated on using the same approach that would probably work for other ministers with different portfolios, but not a Youth Minister.

“During this time, what Dr. Jamila Bio Ibrahim needs to do is to engage directly with the youths, both online and offline. She needs to open up her X account so that she can be engaged by the youth who dominate social media. She also needs to be out there speaking to the youths, explaining what is being done, pleading for calm, and reemphasizing the promise of Mr. President to make life better.

“Before now, Dr. Jamila found it difficult to engage with youths who approach her, either in her office or at any public forum. If she hadn’t been talking to them before now, she should have reasoned that she had no justification to seek to engage with them now. Hence, she chose the easy way out by arranging a controlled event like a town hall where she would have the opportunity to select the faces she wanted to see.

“I think it was the second day of the protest or thereabouts that our attention was drawn to her junior colleague, the Minister of State, Ayodele engaging with a group of protesters somewhere in Abuja. If Dr. Jamila cannot do that, she should at least visit locations with a large concentration of youth to engage and talk to them directly.

“While we understand that the planned town hall meeting is scheduled to be held in the South West Zone, we would like to use this medium to warn Dr. Jamila not to bring her town meeting anywhere in the North. If she cannot engage with us in places where the majority of us can have the opportunity to speak to her, she should not insult us with the selection of her preferred faces to attend any town hall meeting on our behalf.

“We also have it on good authority that the Minister has collected over 2 billion naira on the excuse that she wants to engage youths to stop the protests.

“On our own, the only engagement we want with Dr. Jamila is open, free, and not restricted. We want her to speak to us on the streets and other places we converge as youths. She should meet us where we congregate to get diverse and frank opinions. We do not want an ‘arrangee gathering’ tagged as town hall.

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